Searching for a positive out of an otherwise disastrous afternoon, Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco was grateful to leave Reliant Stadium having lost only a game.

Flacco had little to celebrate after the Texans crushed him and the Ravens 43-13 before a sellout crowd of 71,708 on Sunday afternoon.

“It’s always frustrating when you lose, period,” he said. “Obviously when you lose like that you don’t feel good about it. Like we said in the locker room, they all count the same no matter how you lose. It’s a good thing for us in this one because we took it on the chin.”

The rout began when Texans linebacker Connor Barwin sacked Flacco in the end zone for a safety, cutting the Ravens’ lead to 3-2 with 4:49 to play in the first quarter.

On the second play of the Ravens’ next possession, J.J. Watt tipped Flacco’s pass, and Johnathan Joseph returned the interception 52 yards for a touchdown.

No deflecting blame
On the game, Flacco threw two interceptions and was sacked four times. Defensive linemen and linebackers combined to deflect five of his passes, and the secondary defended six attempts.

“Sometimes they stop rushing the quarterback and try to get their hands up,” he said. “People asked me about it before the game, ‘What are you guys going to do?’ There’s not really much you can do.

“You try to get on them and you try to do all that, but you have to just trust that the ball’s going to get where it’s going to be if we have guys open.

“Every now and then, they’re going to make plays. They made some plays there. They had a lot of batted balls. We have to take a look at it and see how we can maybe prevent it a little better.”

Flacco hardly resembled the quarterback who led the Ravens to a 20-13 victory over the Texans in the division round of the AFC playoffs in January. On that day, he was 14-for-27 for 176 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions.

On Sunday, Flacco didn’t get it going until the Texans had control of the game after taking a 29-3 halftime lead.

4.2 rating at half
Flacco doomed the Ravens in the first half by throwing two interceptions while completing only seven of 20 pass attempts for 52 yards.

He had an abysmal 4.2 quarterback rating in the first half. And although he improved his rating over the second half, he won’t soon brag about an overall 45.4 quarterback rating after completing only 21 of 43 pass attempts for 147 yards, one touchdown and the two interceptions Sunday.

Flacco was flustered all afternoon by the defense, and it’s not as though the Ravens were unprepared for the Texans’ propensity to tip passes.

“That’s what they do,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said of the tactic. “They do a great job with that.

“We worked on it all week, trying to get their hands down, and we were unable to do it.